Pippity vs. Popup Domination (Which one is a better choice?)

Update: After a few years of trying out various different plugins, we realized that most solutions were buggy and didn’t solve all the problems. That’s why we created a much better solution for our own sites. It has A/B testing, built-in reporting, tons of great designs, various different optin types, exit-intent and much more. You can get it at Check out OptinMonster.

Feel free to read the article below, but this comparison has not been updated in a while. We only recommend what we use. In this case, we’re using a plugin that we created ourselves because we only want to use the best.

Also we did a case study on how OptinMonster allowed us to increase our email subscribers by 600%. Industry experts like Search Engine Journal, Chris Brogan, John Dumas, and various others are seeing great results as well.

Not too long ago, we wrote our review about a plugin called Pippity. In the comments, some users asked what is the difference between Pippity and the famous Popup Domination. As promised, we will be comparing the two plugins side by side to determine the pros and cons of each. We are friends with both Michael Dunlop of Popup Domination and Grant Griffiths of Pippity, so this is going to be as honest as it gets.

If you are wondering what the heck do these plugins do? Well in short, they allow you to create lightbox popups in WordPress to increase the opt-in rate for your email newsletter. Now lets see where do these plugins stand when you compare them side by side.

Features

Both plugins allow you to create lightbox popups for your WordPress site, but one has significantly better features that the other lack.

Pippity lets you have multiple popups. Popup Domination does not.

Pippity allows you the ability to do split A/B testing. Popup Domination does not.

Pippity has Advanced Filters option for (referrer status, custom post types, open at the end of post and specific post). Popup Domination only allows you to pick in categories or specific pages.

Pippity has analytics. Popup Domination does not.

Pippity lets you show only to logged out users whereas Popup Domination doesn’t have this option.

Pippity allows custom cookies, Popup Domination does not

Pippity has a bonus Popup Bar feature

Popup Domination has Exit Popups. Pippity does not.

Popup Domination has the option to open popup when mouse leaves the site, Pippity does not.

If you notice Pippity clearly takes the win in the features category.

Ease of Use (UI/UX)

Both plugins are fairly easy to use however one plugin certainly makes the job a lot easier.

You have to manually click on the Popup Domination link as you are going through the process of creating a popup. There is no option to Save and Continue to the next step.

Pippity guides users by providing the option of Save and Continue at the end of each step. The overall User Interface of Pippity is much more friendly to new users whereas Popup Domination lacks styling on its pages like Template Fields, List points etc.

One thing that Pippity lacks in terms of UI is the Activate button which we pointed out in our video review. When you are done creating your popup, you never know that its inactive. You have to click on the little Activate button. Popup Domination because it only allows you to create one popup, has a clear way of telling the user when its inactive.

Winner: Pippity

Front-End Design

Beautiful designs increase conversion. Popup Domination comes with 7 pre-built templates whereas Pippity comes with 8 pre-built templates. While the designs are very similar which there was a big debate between the founders on Twitter, we believe that Popup Domination’s graphics are of better quality. Pippity’s templates seems to lack the designer touch that Popup Domination pre-built templates have.

Design is subjective to beholder’s eye, so in our eyes Popup Domination is a clear winner in this category.

This doesn’t turn away Pippity for us though because we can easily duplicate existing Pippity themes and modify its styling.

Developer Tools

Both plugins offer developer tools in terms of the ability to modify templates. Pippity however does an exceptionally great job at this. You can easily replicate existing themes and customize it. There is just much more support for Developer tools than it is in Popup Domination. Pippity also has the option to open lightboxes on click which allows developers to really customize things around. Popup Domination does not have such option (or they do not have clear documentation).

Our Pick

If you skimmed past our update, we found most of these solutions very buggy and lacking support. This is why we built and released our own plugin called OptinMonster. It is better coded, does not slow down your site, and have the same quality support that you have come to expect from WPBeginner.

28 Comments

The functionality is very fragile. You configure it once, and if you want to change the configuration of other stuff, the first thing you configured de-configures and you have to do it all in one shot.

Their popup are DISABLED in mobile. Their response was that popups like this do not work on mobile or have poor experience. While I agree that they have lower conversion rate, this does not mean that you need to disregard completely. I asked how to enable, and they replied, but after doing code changes, I was surprised that their popups are not even optimized for mobile. I had to do further code changes to make them responsive and looking good on mobile.

There is no way to export all data included on the popup, and on some integrations like Mailchimp they force you to use the double-opt in, where other tools have this as optional.

Also, their support SUCKS. I asked several questions and at the beginning they answered quickly (5 days), but they did not answer my questions on the response and asked again. I’ve been waiting for more than 2 months, and sent them 3 emails already.

This is really a very bad software and service. Please stay away from this and go with another one.

While Pippity is pretty ok, but limited design-wise, Pop Up Domination is the worst plugin we added to our WP.

Not only does it bug constantly but the customer service is inexistant. We tried to contact the support, we got an answer 5 days after asking for our ticket number (although already sent). This is inacceptable.

On top of that, the plugin is infected and causes troubles to WP’s versions.

We tried Optin Monster, and the difference is HUGE. This might be the best Pop Up plugin we ever tried and we have it now on our website.

STAY AWAY from Popup domination: I cannot even DOWNLOAD the damn thing after a MONTH of paying for it, ZERO replies, emails – ANY action from them at all, and still no refund.
I am pissed off as hell, wasting so much time on this!

Hi, as a former customer of popup domination i would like to discourage you from using it.
or if you must, send them an email after purchasing their product (just to test their response time)
in my case they do not respond to my queries (for weeks!) after purchasing their product
and up to this date (4 moths after purchase). have not refunded me….
BE WARNED!
Yaron

I’ve just tested PopUp Domination 3 (looks like the review is done for the previous version) and I’m really delighted. Is dead easy to use it and you can create the pop up in 10 minutes (including grabbing the opt-in details from your service and stuff).
I didn’t try Pippity and I might ask the owners to lend me a copy to try it

Looks like I will give Pippity a try. I originally purchased Pop-Up Domination 2.0 and within a few months they rolled out a newer version and wanted me to pay the entire fee again. I got an email and asked about an U/G path for existing customers….just like everyone here said, NO CUSTOMER SERVICE. Not to mention the very spammy way you have to work through multiple offers to even purchase their product. That tells a lot about how they work…..shaddy

Does anyone here know if Pippity works with the Agility theme (http://labs.sevenspark.com/Agility-HTML)? We are having a terrible time getting a popup plugin to work. We are on WP 3.4.1 right now, and using WP Super Cache. We don’t want to have to disable our cache to use modal popups. WPSubscribers flat out broke our site and no “fix” anyone suggested worked at all…not to mention the plugin and documentation all seem to be written in “translated” English, which makes it hard to read and sometimes hard to understand.

After reading your reviews and having constant issues with Pop-Up domination every time I upgrade Word Press, I purchased Pippity.

I’m extremely disappointed.

I have spent hours and hours trying to get Pippity to work properly and the themes and templates don’t work.

1. When you fill out the text in the in create a pop-up options, it doesn’t show up. It won’t change from the default text. I tried different browsers, clearing my cache…I tried all the different themes.. they all did the same.

I even counted all the characters in the default text in case I had put too many in there. That didn’t make a difference either.

2. When I create a graphic to the exact specifications that it states it cuts half of it out. Or it formats it incorrectly.

3. If I want to go in and edit some of the settings in the pop-up I’ve created it automatically deletes / clears all the settings in there, so you have to go back and set it all up again.

Whatever you do, DON’T bother with Popup Domination. They don’t respond to emails, won’t return your money EVEN if you request a refund within their 60-day period and the HTML is a nightmare to figure out. Check the forums and message boards. This isn’t just MY issue, it’s very common and they are doing NOTHING to address it.

I use the free optinpop plugin on my sites. It is available through the extend area on wordpress.org. Its not bad and I just discovered that I could modify the html file through the plugin editor within the admin area.

@Joseph Dang There is an annual subscription for the simple fact we want a sustainable business. One which we know will be here for the long haul. One which can provide innovation and support into the future.

@GrantGriffiths@Joseph Dang I’m hoping that you provide better customer service than Popup and have some support. I don’t mind paying the subscription if I get VALUE in return, something that Popup does NOT have.

One important difference not mentioned above is the level of customer service between the two. Readers should know that I also prefer Pippity because of the amazing features, but more importantly for me, the response time I received from the plugin developer was amazing when I had a question, and also some feature requests.

If you look at the “Get Satisfaction” page for Popup Domination you will quickly see the lack of response…which to me indicates that all they cared about was user’s money…not a quality product.

@Adam W. Warner Thanks Adam. Nicky is an amazing developer and we are thrilled to be working with him and his partner on Pippity. We feel it is a great addition to what we offer with http://headwaythemes.com

I don’t suppose you will answer my support questions if I send them as a comment? Maybe spend less time thanking people who you have helped and more time helping people like me that just cannot get a response?

Thanks for choosing to leave a comment. Please keep in mind that all comments are moderated according to our comment policy, and your email address will NOT be published. Please Do NOT use keywords in the name field. Let's have a personal and meaningful conversation.

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.

Get 20% off on ShowThemes beautiful WordPress themes for event websites.

Featured In

About WPBeginner®

WPBeginner is a free WordPress resource site for Beginners. WPBeginner was founded in July 2009 by Syed Balkhi. The main goal of this site is to provide quality tips, tricks, hacks, and other WordPress resources that allows WordPress beginners to improve their site(s).